Sonnet Technologies today announced that it will introduce their RackMac mini Xserve for Thunderbolt-enabled Mac minis at IBC 2011. According to the company, this system securely mounts a Mac mini inside a specially designed 1U enclosure, which also contains one PCIe 2.0 x4 slot, a 75W power supply plus a Thunderbolt daisy-chain port. This allows users to connect one half-length PCIe 2.0 adapter card to the Mac mini via a Thunderbolt cable, while allowing the connection of additional Thunderbolt peripherals to the daisy-chain Thunderbolt port. The enclosure also delivers strategic airflow cooling to the computer, provides a front panel power button and USB port and can automatically power on/off the PCIe Expansion Slot in unison with the Mac mini. The RackMac mini Xserver is expected to be available at the end of November, with pricing to be announced at a later date.

this makes me question a lot of thing's one can thunderbolt keep up with the demands of the pci slot in the case??? is there a external power supply for this unit??? why would we need something like this

this makes me question a lot of thing's one can thunderbolt keep up with the demands of the pci slot in the case??? is there a external power supply for this unit??? why would we need something like this

The specs for PCI express 2.0 are out on the net and not secret. I will take a wild guess that the power supply is internal (hopefully) as it is rack mountable. As to who will want this, it seems rather apparent to me, somebody who has TB and wants certain types of expansion with no free PCIe slots._________________2.3 GHz i7 Mini (stock)
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